I am brand new to this, but have been reading and educating myself for several months. Recently I have purchased a 6 gallon glass carboy and 7.5ish gallon fermenter bucket. I am very, very interested in this breaking my brewing virginity! A few questions I have...

I am going to utilize the fermenter bucket as the primary then racking off into the 6 gallon carboy. I am using the mead calculator to the best of my ability and am aiming for 14% abv. By doing such, I know my brew place has Lalvin 1122... is this a decent choice yeast for this recipe? I know that you can "use any kind of yeast you want", but I reallly want to have a good first go around! haha!

I am interested in a medium sweet mead. I am aware I can backsweeten with honey and chemical additives, but I'd rather not bother with that! This is what I was aiming to do....

By doing this to the calculator, it has potential of 14.84% but of course should die at 14% due to yeast tolerance of 1122... correct? Leaving a sweet taste remaining due it not reaching maximum potential? Am I understanding this correctly?

Do you recommend making a starter with the wyeast sweet mead? If not, should I pitch 1 or 2 packets?

Starters are great on any brew, because it lets you know that the yeast are viable and help ramp them up in order to consume all of the fermentable sugar without stressing the yeast and causing off flavors....if you don't have the ability to create a starter, 2 packets will get you there as well.

I made this tonight with WLP720 Sweet Mead Yeast(which was the closest available at my LHBS). Also had trouble finding the White Grape/Cherry Juice, so I used Welch's White Grape, Added 1 pound of pureed cherries with 10 pounds of pureed/whole frozen strawberries. Probably a little heavier on the pureed side than whole, and pretty close to 12 pounds of Honey.

I've mostly brewed beer and cider in the past, tried one wine that tastes fine, but doesn't appear to have been degassed properly(just a little bubbly on the tongue).

So... Do I need to worry about degassing this like a wine (this is my first mead, and have only done one wine)... or will the racking prescribed in the recipe take care of it to make it still?

Thanks for the reply, I may have made it sound confusing. I actually ended up with 11 total pounds of fruit, not 10 pureed AND 10 whole pounds of strawberries, but a mixture of both pureed and whole, with the one pound of cherries.

It's aggressively fermenting in primary, I guess I'll find out how i did sometime this summer.

This is my first attempt at mead and if this comes out drinkable, I'm taking a day off and getting drunk.
Having read this recipe (posted by SD-SILM, 05-14-2011) I thought, 'I can do this'. *BWAHAHAHA!

I started out following SD-SLIM'S notes by boiling a gallon of water. *While the water was boiling, I poured 12 pounds of honey into my mixing pot (I had previously poured off 3 lbs. to use elsewhere), then used the boiling water to rinse the rest of the honey out of the containers. *Once the containers are clear, discard the remainder of the boiled water (the hotter you make your base, the more cooling you will need to do).
Now you have honey and water, it's time to add the Welch's juice and Yeast Nutrient... Mix everything together and pour into fermenter...add cold water to bring up to five gallons...mix or shake to combine ingredients and aerate.
SD-SLIM advises, 'At this time you want to add strawberries... I prefer to purée my berries and place them into the fermenter, it is my experience that it helps speed the process and really brings in the berry flavor'.
Well, that's where everything went to hell. *At this point, I was at the 'Now you have honey and water' stage and reading ahead. *My brewing kitchen is in a studio apartment above our regular kitchen. *So I went downstairs and began pureeing 12 lbs. of 'frozen strawberries'. *Ever tried that? *I wound up with a red Slurpie CONCENTRATE. *Now, how in the heck am I gonna get that into a carboy? *I needed a LARGE funnel with an output big enough for sliced strawberries that didn't get completely puréed. *2-liter 7-Up bottle to the rescue. *Meet the Redneck Fruit Funnel. *A wooden spoon handle makes a perfect ramrod. *So I took that upstairs, added water to the 5-gallon carboy to the five gallon level, funneled the super Slurpie into the 6-gallon carboy, turned around and saw the Welch's juice, still on the counter (SHOSBOT!).
Ok, I can still do this. *I poured off a little over a 1/2 gallon of honey and water and more water, so that I could get the Welch's juice into the 5-gallon carboy.
In hindsight, I think SD-SLIM might have meant that the fruit goes into the fermenter with the honey, water, and juice PRIOR to bringing the water level up to five gallons. *I was thinking the only way to fit five gallons of honey/water and juice (the mix) into 12 lbs of strawberries is to put it all into a 6-gallon carboy. *But that still left about a half gallon of mix leftover. *I at least had the foresight to add the yeast and the nutrient into the 6-gallon prior to adding the mix.
Well, like I said in the beginning,*if this comes out drinkable, I'm taking a day off and getting drunk. *We'll see in about 6 months.